Climate change is placing unprecedented pressure on the crops that feed the world, altering patterns of disease, flooding, and drought in ways that threaten global food security. Professor Pamela Ronald, a leader in plant genetics research at UC Davis, will describe her research identifying the genes that allow crops to withstand disease and environmental stress, including her discovery of the flood-tolerant Sub1 rice variety now grown by millions of smallholder farmers across Asia. Her talk will explore the science behind climate-resilient agriculture, efforts to reduce agriculture’s environmental footprint, the path from laboratory discovery to impact in farmers’ fields, and her perspective on genetics, sustainability, and the future of food.

Pamela Ronald is a Professor at UC Davis, an Investigator at the Innovative Genomics Institute at UC Berkeley, and Director of Grass Genetics at the Joint Bioenergy Institute. She earned her B.A. from Reed College, M.S. degrees from Stanford University and Uppsala University, and her Ph.D. from UC Berkeley.

Dr. Ronald’s research focuses on plant genes that confer resistance to disease and tolerance to environmental stress. She is the coauthor of Tomorrow’s Table: Organic Farming, Genetics, and the Future of Food and has received numerous international honors, including the GCHERA World Agriculture Prize, the Wolf Prize in Agriculture, the VinFuture Special Prize for Female Innovators, the American Society of Plant Biologists Leadership Award, and Stanford University’s President’s Award for the Advancement of the Common Good.

She is an elected fellow of the Royal Swedish Academy of Forestry and Agriculture, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Department Sponsors: The Graduate School, Institute for Public Health Genetics, Department of Genome Sciences, Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology, School of Environmental and Forest Sciences, Food Systems Nutrition and Health Program, Department of Bioethics and Humanities